And we’re back with another three Xena Warrior Princess episodes to take us to the end of season two! Episodes usually improve the nearer one gets to the close of a season, since this is the time in which all the stops are pulled out in order to end things on a bang, but Xena opts for three rather low-key and standalone stories that emphasis the characters’ relationships rather any long-term story arcs.
Those were different times! But it’s been fun revisiting this crazy, funny, tonally schizophrenic show. Now I can start looking forward to season three, where everything really hit its stride.
The Price
Plot: After being attacked by tribal warriors known as the Horde, Xena takes command of a small and demoralized army of Athenians who are trying to hold them off. However, as the siege goes on, Gabrielle watches in horror as Xena starts operating with the same cruelty that defined her darkest days.
This episode is made up of two parts. One half is an exploration of what makes Xena and Gabrielle tick and an examination of their dynamic in regards to how they relate to each other and what each one brings to the relationship.
The other half is a story that could have served their characters better, simply by laying out clearer stakes and choosing an enemy that wasn’t so… well, I’ll get to that. At its core is a great idea: Xena and Gabrielle find themselves in a situation in which the former is called upon to lead men into battle, only for her ruthlessness and brutality to re-emerge as the situation deteriorates, while the latter grows increasingly horrified by how much her friend is changing.
Like I said, that's a great idea and part of the reason why the story works is because it's an entirely understandable scenario. If Xena comes up against a dangerous enemy, then naturally she's going to use all her skills to defend herself and other people – and in this case, she's got someone she deeply cares about to worry about as well. Even though it's just a matter of time before she's doing things like stabbing people in the back and capturing men in order to torture them for information, she's got the "it's war" excuse to fall back on.
And there is no real right answer to this. When nothing less than survival is on the line, what lengths are we allowed to go to in order to protect ourselves and others? Was Gabrielle right in telling Xena they had to stop and free the injured/dying men, or was Xena right in saying that there was no point? After all, they can't help anyone when they're dead.
One tends to side with Xena in that particular situation, but it's clear that at some point during the episode, Xena crosses a line. Perhaps it's when she demands that Gabrielle save all the water/food for the men still on the walls, or when she starts using dubious war tactics to gain an advantage, or when she starts visibly enjoying herself. Everyone will have a different threshold.
It goes to show that despite her "recuperation" into the ranks of the good guys, there's still a lot of darkness within her, and she needs the constant companionship of Gabrielle to keep her in line. (Hey, much like the Doctor/Companion dynamic, only much darker).
But there was a number of ways this story could have played out, especially in regards to its resolution. Maybe it would have been interesting to see Gabrielle trying to solve the conflict through peaceful methods, only for her to narrowly escape death and have Xena be partially justified in what she was trying to do. Or else the Horde could have been so completely deranged and bloodthirsty that the Athenians’ only path to victory would be to retreat and let them have the contested land (with Gabrielle advocating this tactic as opposed to Xena's kamikaze attitude).
The problem is that we didn't really get a sense of what the Horde wanted or why they were fighting in the first place, and though I spent most of the episode thinking that a possible answer was that the Athenians were trespassing on their sacred land, it would have been quite interesting to see Gabrielle talk Xena into accepting a surrender. In her mind, sometimes you just have to let the aggressor take what they want because it's not worth the human cost.
In the end, they Took a Third Option by having Xena take on the Horde's best warrior in one-to-one combat (thus combining Xena and Gabrielle's belief-systems), after Gabrielle has proved their humanity by venturing out onto the battlefield to give water to the wounded. It’s a reasonably neat way of wrapping up the episode, though the scenario possibly called for something a bit more ambiguous.
Especially since many elements didn’t work so well. The main argument in favour of Xena’s tactics was that the Horde were a brutal enemy that had to be fought on their own vicious terms if anyone wanted any chance of survival. It’s a pity then that the Horde generated no fear in me whatsoever. They were badly characterized as primitive savages, complete with warpaint, bone decorations and feather head-dresses. Surely even in the nineties this was a fairly cringe-worthy take on an “othered” enemy.
This meant that a lot of the action sequences didn't work either. The stuff on the river just felt slow and clumsy. Surely Xena and Gabrielle would have been faster on foot, and if they're trying to elude the Horde, then why on earth go out on a boat into the middle of the river in plain sight? Water just slows a person down.
Then, once we get to the fort, it was unclear why exactly the Athenians were there, what they were trying to achieve by being there, and why they couldn't just leave. They claim the Horde surrounded the place, but there was certainly no on-screen indication of that. Again, it was the nineties, so the set probably cost about fifty dollars, but then why not have something in the woods instead, like a claustrophobic watchtower that they weren’t trying to defend, but escape. Something small that put them at a distinct disadvantage.
Basically, they needed to generate a deeper sense of fear surrounding their enemies and dread at the situation that was unfolding. The scariest thing in the world is the unknowable and the unseen, maybe they should have set more of the action at night, in the forest, against enemies that couldn't be understood and whose motivation was obscure (okay, I guess we kinda got that last one, but it was wrapped up in the silliness of how the Horde actually looked). This would have made Gabrielle's actions at the end of the episode all the more powerful.
But the good cancelled out the more clunky elements. It was essentially a deeper look at the way Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship works and how it affects each woman. They're what makes the show so special and they were in great form here.
Lost Mariner
Plot: Gabrielle ends up onboard a cursed ship that she can never leave, captained by the legendary Cecrops, who is doomed to sails the seas until he is “redeemed by love.”
This was a fairly pleasant episode; nothing too memorable but certainly not bad either. I think the actor playing Cecrops made all the difference, and (as much as I support kiwi actors) it's a nice change to have a guest star who can actually – you know, act.
Outside the recurring guest-stars, I don't think we've had a one-shot guest star who could hold his own against Lucy Lawless since Ray Woolf as Marmax in Is There a Doctor in the House? In a short amount of time, he really made you care about his character and the position he was in. And the same could be said of Tony Todd as Cecrops.
Storywise, it was nice to get a little sequel of sorts to the myth surrounding the founding of Athens and who would become its patron saint (that is, Athena). That Poseidon would take vengeance on the man who denied him the city was a very Poseidon thing to do, and though many aspects were predictable (the Flying Dutchman scenario, the crewman sacrificing himself for Cecrops, Poseidon offering Cecrops a deal, the Power of Love saving everyone) there were a couple of nice twists in there - I honestly didn't except Cecrops to survive the episode.
And as cheesy and inexplicable as it was, at least the Power of Love that broke the curse didn't involve some sort of crush that Cecrops had on Xena/Gabrielle. And there was some cute Xena/Gabrielle stuff, what with Xena not hesitating to leap onto the cursed ship once she knew Gabrielle was upon it – though how she leapt from shore to ship is probably the craziest thing we’ve ever seen on this show.
Oh, and even though I figured (then confirmed) that the name Cecrops was taken straight out of the myths, it was very jarring to hear for a while. I kept thinking he was called Sea-Crops.
A Comedy of Eros
Plot: Cupid and Psyche’s young son Bliss has stolen his father’s bow and arrows and is causing all sorts of random people to fall in love with each other. When Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer arrive at Hestia’s temple to prevent warlord Draco from capturing Hestian Virgins and selling them off as slaves, Xena falls in love with Draco, Draco falls in love with Gabrielle, Gabrielle falls in love with Joxer…
Well, first of all, I think the title is quite funny. Even though they’ve been calling the god of love by his Roman name this whole time, they add his Greek one to the title. (Matter of fact, if this entire show is set in Greece, then Hercules should be called Heracles, and Ulysses should have been called Odysseus. Ah well, I guess they just go with what sounds good).
This was a typical "love potion gone awry" episode, which seems to pop up in every single cult fantasy show ever. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did it with Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Merlin did with Sweet Dreams and I think Charmed probably did one every season – though I disowned that show after season one. It's difficult to go wrong with the formula. There's just something inherently funny about seeing people go completely lovesick over people who are utterly unsuited for them (though in this case they managed to wring a bit of pathos out of it too – poor Joxer!)
Babies generally don't make very good actors, so I applaud whoever was behind the camera desperately trying to make Bliss laugh and giggle despite being dressed in a mini-toga and hung on a suspension wire. Methinks there were probably some very frazzled parents and stressed out camera-operators before this day was done, and despite some dodgy camera angles (there was no way Karl Urban was holding a real baby in his arms in that opening sequence) they actually did a pretty good job in making this work.
It's a pity that they didn't have a little bit more lead-in to the fact that Cupid suddenly has a wife/son since I actually remember the Hercules episode in which he meets and falls in love with Psyche, only now they've skipped straight ahead to matrimony and parenthood. I'll just assume that was Psyche off-camera, calling her husband to their room.
It was nice to see Draco again, as in many ways he provides a good reflection of Xena's past. He's certainly not a good guy, but he's not evil either. He has a sense of honour to him, and when Xena starts talking about how he could be redeemed, it doesn't sound completely out of the question (even though the writers are clearly poking fun of the whole "bad boy redeemed by the love of a good woman" trope). He's a likeable bad guy whilst still being an effective antagonist to Xena.
An interesting component of Bliss's love arrows was that when Xena was made to fall in love with Draco, her first impulse isn't to join him in pillaging the temple and kidnapping the virgins, but in "fixing" him and getting him to join her on the side of good. She's still essentially Xena, which isn't something that love spells in fiction usually do (for instance, on Buffy the love spell rendered every woman in Sunnydale a complete psychopath who was utterly obsessed with Xander). She was also self-aware enough to realize on her own that she was behaving oddly and come to the conclusion that she was under some sort of spell.
Likewise, Draco under a love spell is still aggressive and dangerous, and naturally assumes that Xena's playing him somehow, putting a spin on the whole "one-upmanship" of the storyline, with each one trying to trick the other out of capturing/protecting the Hestian Virgins. Xena's ploy of disguising the virgins as everyday commoners was a neat trick, though the last second arrival of Draco’s henchman Pinullus was maybe a bit contrived (how did he get there so quickly?)
There was also some seriously funny stuff in here. My favourite would have to be when Xena was posing as a virgin priestess – the veil made it obvious who it really was, but the way Lucy/Xena overplayed the girly run was great. Also, when Xena is herding all the priestesses back into the temple, and one tells her: "I dropped my purse!" was completely hilarious. I'm not even sure why, it may have been the delivery or the sheer irrelevance of it. Or when Xena races outside only to dart back in again when arrows are fired at her.
So there was some great physical comedy here, though I bet Joxer was not popular with fandom when he got in the way of Xena/Gabrielle right when Gabby was hit by Cupid's arrow.
As with most stories that involve a love spell, this walked a thin line between comedy and ... "dubcon", shall we call it? I was relieved at the reveal that Xena/Gabrielle's clothing strewn all over the ground didn't lead to what we were meant to think it led to, and though it's pretty clear why Draco and his cronies wanted to kidnap the virgin priestesses, at least it was made explicit that Draco had ordered his men to keep them..."intact", shall we say?
But surely when Bliss's arrows hit the fleeing virgins they would have seen and thus fallen in love with each other long before they turned around and saw the soldiers. I was expecting the men to chase them into the back of the cave only to become completely distracted by some girl-on-girl action.
Though I have to say, as a season finale this was a bit odd. I mean, I thought that Is There A Doctor In The House? included a very understated and clever statement about Xena's progress, putting her in a position in which her healing abilities rather than her combat skills were what was really needed. But this... it's not that it wasn't fun or enjoyable or anything – but as a season finale? And for it to end on a shot of saddened Joxer rather than the usual ode to womyn power? That just felt a bit off.
But in saying that, I have to say that I really, really like the Xena/Joxer relationship. It's great to watch a male/female dynamic that will never be anything but platonic: Xena has a fondness/exasperation for Joxer that's very sweet, and Joxer has plenty of bravado but also respect bordering on awe for Xena. Even though it isn't explored in much detail, it's a lovely rapport, and it's always a sweet moment when Xena acknowledges Joxer, whether he's done something truly heroic, or in this case, feeling miserable.
(I just don't think season two should have necessarily gone out on a scene between those two over Xena/Gabrielle).
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